About Me

I've written stories ever since I could write, but somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the joy and natural desire to write for me. Churning out stories every other week for my degree course, and forcing non-existent brilliance out of myself has drained my natural spirit. So, I have created myself a blog in an attempt to find a way back to what made me fall in love with writing in the first place. Only you and I will discover if I fail or succeed...

Friday, 23 July 2010

In Which I Progress… Somewhat

I’m back at last you don’t say! Firstly, let me say I haven’t been doggedly nosing through papers looking for stories.[1] I have, however, been writing. Pauses for applause… silence. Yes, okay, it’s not much of a feat considering I am a writer; this is what I do.What I am proud of is that I have been steadily for one week now been writing around 500 words a day.[2] I got myself into a nice little routine: wake-up, breakfast, attempt to read Chart Throb by Ben Elton for Master’s course in September[3], WRITE!!!, lunch, attempt not to throw Chart Throb out of window[4], etc.

And how have I miraculously come up with ideas? I hear you ask. Simple; I haven’t. I decided to work some more on a project I’ve had for quite some time.[5] I’ve been working in particular on a scene involving a netball match. I indulged in this for one day and enjoyed it so much I attempted to write a short story for the Writers’ Forum competition about netball. Result; fail. Somehow in the first 100 words I had created a whiny self-absorbed character no one could relate to and didn’t have any kind of plot. Solution; try and forget about it and write some more of the work I want to write. Three days later I still had no story, but my scene was coming on very nicely. It was full of meaty action, pensive thoughts and good enough to publish one day. But why wait? The scene was perfectly good enough to stand on its own with a few tweaks; why not see if I can get published sooner? How about within weeks?

Thus, my invigorating netball scene has become a story of 1000-3000 words in its own right. Wise writers always say that every good scene should be fully rounded; have its own mini story progression with a beginning, middle and finish. I shall continue this scene and update on how it works.[6]

What is the moral of this story? I didn’t keep to my previous plan, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t use it in the future. It’s an idea that will come in handy some day. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that, sometimes, it can do you well to revisit old stories for either inspiration, or just to try and rescue them.

Until next time. Tarrah xx

[1] Possibly as I don’t buy newspapers and have been living alone for the past three-to-four weeks. Not that my housemates would buy newspapers, come to think of it…